This year I’ve been teaching many ITIL Foundation certification classes. You’ve heard that “the teacher learns more than the student” and I agree with that. There’s something about standing in front of a room full of very smart, skeptical people, that keeps you on your toes.

So here are some common mistakes I see when people talk and think about ITIL:

1 - Not being explicit, with $ dollars attached, when defining “why are we doing this” and “how will we know it’s working” In ITIL terminology, you need to build your KGI’s and KPI’s to metric based against these questions.

2 - Closely related to #1… not getting senior executive sponsorship - by senior I mean “the CIO’s boss” and by sponsorship I mean a firm commitment that “when the sacred cows get scared, I will support the project”

3- Forgetting that at core, ITIL implementation is a people and culture change, that just happens to look like a process and technology change. So if you ignore the legitimate human fears and concerns, you’ll hit big problems.

4 - Forgetting Pareto’s Law. Also known as the 80/20 rule. Focus your limited time and money where the big, obvious wins are lurking. Ignore the minor stuff.

5 - Here’s a very simple one: get as many people as you can possibly manage, trained into ITIL. ITIL Foundation Certificates are good, but if you can’t afford that, at least get everyone into introductory sessions. And hand out ITIL glossaries and quick-references to everyone so we all speak the same language.

There’s more… what have you seen?

Also, check out our White Paper on Developing the Busines Value for ITIL.

Scott